[HCI] Week 04 Contextual Design Part I

Lecture 4

Contextual Design Part I

Human Computer Interaction/COG3103, 2016 Fall Class hours : Monday 1-3 pm/Wendseday 2-3 pm Lecture room : Widang Hall 209 26th September

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY : ELICITING WORK ACTIVITY DATA

The UX Book Chapter 3

Lecture #4 COG_Human Computer Interaction 2

INTRODUCTION


Figure 3-1 You are here; in the contextual inquiry chapter, within understanding user work and needs in the context of the overall Wheel lifecycle template.

INTRODUCTION

• Work

– Work is the set of activities that people undertake to accomplish goals. Some of these activities

involve system or product usage. This concept includes play, if play, rather than work per se, is

the goal of the user.

• Work Domain

– The entire context of work and work practice in the target enterprise or other target usage

environment.

• Work Practice

– Work practice is the pattern of established actions, approaches, routines, conventions, and

procedures followed and observed in the customary performance of a particular job to carry

out the operations of an enterprise. Work practice often involves learned skills, decision

making, and physical actions and can be based on tradition, ritualized and habituated.


INTRODUCTION

• Work Activity

– A work activity is comprised of sensory, cognitive, and physical actions made

by users in the course of carrying out the work practice.

• Contextual Inquiry

– Contextual inquiry is an early system or product UX lifecycle activity to gather

detailed descriptions of customer or user work practice for the purpose of

understanding work activities and underlying rationale. The goal of contextual

inquiry is to improve work practice and construct and/or improve system

designs to support it. Contextual inquiry includes both interviews of customers

and users and observations of work practice occurring in its real-world

context.


INTRODUCTION

• Understanding Other People’s Work Practice

– This chapter is where you collect data about the work domain and user’s work

activities. This is not about “requirements” in the traditional sense but is

about the difficult task of understanding user’s work in context and

understanding what it would take in a system design to support and improve

the user’s work practice and work effectiveness.

– Why not just gather requirements from multiple users and build a design

solution to fit them all? You want an integrated design that fits into the “fabric”

of your customer’s operations, not just “point solutions” to specific problems

of individual users. This can only be achieved by a design driven by contextual

data, not just opinions or negotiation of a list of features.


INTRODUCTION

• Observing and Interviewing in Situ: What They Say vs. What They Do

– Observing users and asking users to talk about their work activities as

they are doing them in their own work context get them to speak from

what they are doing, accessing domain knowledge situated “in the world”

– Contextual inquiry in human–computer interaction (HCI) derives from

ethnography, a branch of anthropology that focuses on the study and

systematic description of various human cultures.


INTRODUCTION


Figure 3-2 Observation and interviewing for contextual data collection.

INTRODUCTION:MUTTS Case Study

• MUTTS

– Middleburg University Ticket Transaction Service

• The current business process suffers from numerous drawbacks

– All customers have to go to one location to buy tickets in person.

– MUTTS has partnered with Tickets4ever.com as a national online tickets distribution

platform. However, Tickets4ever.com suffers from low reliability and has a reputation for

poor user experience.

– Current operation of MUTTS involves multiple systems that do not work together very

well.

– The rapid hiring of ticket sellers to meet periodic high demand is hampered by university

and state hiring policies.


INTRODUCTION:MUTTS Case Study

• Organizational context of the existing system

– The supervisor of MUTTS wishes to expand revenue-generating activities.

– To leverage their increasing national academic and athletic prominence, the

university is seeking a comprehensive customized solution that includes

integration of tickets for athletic events (currently tickets to athletic events are

managed by an entirely different department).

– By including tickets for athletic events that generate significant revenue,

MUTTS will have access to resources to support their expansion.

– The university is undergoing a strategic initiative for unified branding across

all its departments and activities. The university administration is receptive to

creative design solutions for MUTTS to support this branding effort.


THE SYSTEM CONCEPT STATEMENT

• What is it?

– A system concept statement is typically 100 to 150 words in length.

– It is a mission statement for a system to explain the system to outsiders

and to help set focus and scope for system development internally.

– Writing a good system concept statement is not easy.

– The amount of attention given per word is high. A system concept

statement is not just written; it is iterated and refined to make it as clear

and specific as possible.



• An effective system concept statement answers at least the following

questions:

– What is the system name?

– Who are the system users?

– What will the system do?

– What problem(s) will the system solve? (You need to be broad here to

include business objectives.)

– What is the design vision and what are the emotional impact goals? In

other words, what experience will the system provide to the user? This

factor is especially important if the system is a commercial product.



• Example: System Concept Statement for the Ticket Kiosk System


The Ticket Kiosk System will replace the old ticket retail system, the Middleburg University Ticket Transaction Service, by providing 24-hour-a-day distributed kiosk service to the general public. This service includes access to comprehensive event information and the capability to rapidly purchase tickets for local events such as concerts, movies, and the performing arts. The new system includes a significant expansion of scope to include ticket distribution for the entire MU athletic program. Transportation tickets will also be available, along with directions and parking information for specific venues. Compared to conventional ticket outlets, the Ticket Kiosk System will reduce waiting time and offer far more extensive information about events. A focus on innovative design will enhance the MU public profile while Fostering the spirit of being part of the MU community and offering the customer a Beaming interaction experience. (139 words)

USER WORK ACTIVITY DATA GATHERING

• To do your user work activity data gathering you will:

– prepare and conduct field visits to the customer/user work environment,

where the system being designed will be used

– observe and interview users while they work

– inquire into the structure of the users’ own work practice

– learn about how people do the work your system is to be designed to

support

– take copious, detailed notes, raw user work activity data, on the

observations and interviews



• Before the Visit: Preparation for the Domain-Complex System

Perspective

– Learn about your customer organization before the visit

– Learn about the domain

– Issues about your team

– Lining up the right customer and user people

– Get access to “key” people



• Before the Visit: Preparation for the Domain-Complex System

Perspective

– What if you cannot find real users?

– Setting up the right conditions

– How many interviewees at a time?

– Preparing your initial questions

– Before the visit: Preparation for the product perspective

– Anticipating modeling needs in contextual inquiry: Create contextual data

“bins”



• During the Visit: Collecting User Work Activity Data in the Domain-

Complex System Perspective

– When you first arrive

– Remember the goal

– Establish trust and rapport

– Form partnerships with users

– Task data from observation and interview

– Recording video

– Note taking

– Use a numbering system to identify each point in data





– How to proceed

• Be a listener; in most cases you should not offer your opinions about what users

might need.

• Do not lead the user or introduce your own perspectives.

• Do not expect every user to have the same view of the work domain and the work;

ask questions about the differences and find ways to combine to get the “truth.”

• Capture the details as they occur; do not wait and try to remember it later.

• Be an effective data ferret or detective. Follow leads and discover, extract, “tease

out” and collect “clues.” Be ready to adapt, modify, explore, and branch out.





– Pay attention to information needs of users

– What about design ideas that crop up?

– What about analyst and designer ideas that crop up?

– Questions not to ask

• Do not ask about the future.

• Do not ask for design advice, how they would design a given feature.

• Do not ask a question by trying to state what you think is their rationale.



• During the Visit: Collecting User Work Activity Data in the Domain-Complex System

Perspective

– Collect work artifacts

– Other forms of data collection

• Copious digital pictures of the physical environment, devices, people at work, and

anything else to convey work activities and context visually. Respect the privacy of the

people and ask for permission when appropriate.

• On-the-fly diagrams of workflow, roles, and relationships; have people there check them

for agreement.

• On-the-fly sketches of the physical layout, floor plans (not necessary to be to scale),

locations of people, furniture, equipment, communications connections, etc.

• Quantitative data—for example, how many people do this job, how long do they typically

work before getting a break, or how many widgets per hour do they assemble on the

average?




Figure 3-3 Examples of work artifacts gathered from a local restaurant.

DATA-DRIVEN VS. MODEL-DRIVEN INQUIRY

• Data-Driven Inquiry

– Data-driven inquiry is led entirely by the work activity data as it presents itself,

forestalling any influence from the analyst’s own knowledge, experience, or

expectations. The idea is to avoid biases in data collection.

• Model-Driven Inquiry

– In model-driven inquiry, contextual data gathering is informed by knowledge

and expectations from experience, intelligent conjecture, and knowledge of

similar systems and situations. The idea is to be more efficient by using what

you know, but it comes at the risk of missing data due to biases.


HISTORY

• Roots in Activity Theory

– Scandinavian work activity theory (Bjerknes, Ehn, & Kyng, 1987; Boker, 1991; Ehn, 1988)

– the impact of computer-based systems on human labor and democracy within the

organizations of the affected workers.

• Roots in Ethnography

– anthropology (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993)

– The goal is to study and document details of their daily lives and existence.

• Getting Contextual Studies into HCI

– The foundations for contextual design in HCI were laid by researchers at Digital Equipment

Corporation (Whiteside & Wixon, 1987; Wixon, 1995; Wixon, Holtzblatt, & Knox, 1990).

• Connections to Participatory Design

– participatory design and collaborative analysis of requirements and design developed by

Muller and associates (1993a, 1993b) and collaborative users’ task analysis (Lafrenie`re 1996).


Exercise 3-1: System Concept Statement for a System of Your Choice

• Goal: Get practice in writing a concise system concept statement.

• Activities:

– Write a system concept statement for a system of your choice.

– Iterate and polish it. The 150 or fewer words you write here will be among the most

important words in the whole project; they should be highly polished, which means that

you should spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy thinking about, writing,

reading, editing, discussing, and rewriting this system concept statement.

• Deliverables: Your “final” system concept statement.

• Schedule: Given the simplicity of the domain, we expect you can get what you need

from this exercise in about 30 minutes.


Homework


Make a Game Character of Your

Own

Write a diary on your journey in the game world

Finish the Class Exercise 3-1

1 2 3

Pinterest - Capture your game

character in the game world you’ve been belonging to

- Uploads the images on the “Character” board

Your Blog Post #4 - Title “3 days in

<<Game_Title>>” - Explain your Character - Describe the game story and

context - Capture a convo with other

characters (text capture) - Capture game scenes of the

Journey

Your Blog Post #5 - 150 words or fewer

PLS Send me your Pinterest Page Address Submission Due : 11: 59 pm Friday 30th September

Education

[HCI] Week 04 Contextual Design Part I